New to Family History? Check out our Getting Started page.
Check out House Of Names to investigate the origins of the
Chapman surname or get a copy of the Chapman family Crest (a great gift idea!).

Chapman records on Ancestry

Ancestry is a major source of information if you are filling out your John William Chapman family tree. Many large databases are available to search covering from births, deaths and marriages, military records, census records and immigration records with many other smaller collections too. Free trials are normally available and are a good way to fill out a lot of your tree quickly.

DNA

Sometimes you can run into a brick wall in your tree and you just don't have enough evidence to make that next step back in time. A DNA test can sometimes help to make a link to a particular family name if you find you share common DNA with people who have the same or similar surnames as each other. If you are lucky then you may get a match within a few generations and discover some John William Chapman ancestors. Additionally, the modern DNA test can give you a breakdown of your ethnic mix - you may be surprised at the results!

Have you reached a brick wall in your Chapman Tree?

Birth, Death and Marriage Records for John William Chapman and the Chapman Family History

Birth, Death and Marriage records are often the best method of making the links to the John William Chapman Genealogy that will form part of your family tree. Although records vary from country to country, they are normally the most formal record of a person's relations. From the sources listed below it will be possible to locate a birth record and, from that record, a birth certificate may be obtainable which is likely to list the names of the parents, therefore taking you back another generation. A marriage certificate may also list the names of the respective fathers of the bride and groom which may then help you to find them earlier in life on a census record enableing you to fill out more detail in the John William Chapman family tree.

Did you know that there are currently 52710 people with the Chapman surname in the UK? Chapman is now ranked number 76 for popularity in the UK.

Chapman Genealogy Databases

Another way to build your tree quickly is to use the research other people have already done. This can help to confirm
or refute your own deductions - however, be wary of taking this data at face value as other researchers may not have been as meticulous as you.
Always try to back up deductions with some definitive sources rather than relying too heavily on others.

Search the WikiTree database for user contributed records for John William Chapman.

Study MyTrees for information on the Chapman family and people looking to contact living Chapman relations.

Search One Great Family for Chapman records submitted by people who are already researching the Chapman Family Tree.

Chapman Forums

There are a number of forums which are dedicated to rearching particular surnames. These can be good places to share
your findings and also to tap into the knowledge that others may already have. These can sometimes be a good way of finding living relations as
these tend not to show up on the other sources of information for privacy reasons.

View the distribution of the Chapman surname in Britain using the
public profiler Names database. The public profiler Names database contains distributions for
the Chapman surname in both 1881 and 1998. It also contains data on the ethnicity breakdown of the Chapman surname.

Comments

Looking for information on a John William Chapman in your family tree? Why not post a question here -

Some Famous People called John William Chapman

John William Chapman (September 8, 1894?August 1978) was the 37th Lieutenant Governor of Illinois.

Other names that sound a bit like Chapman

Family names can get corrupted over time, particularly where literacy was not as good. The following list contains some names
that have similar sounds so you may want to also look at one or two of the more likely possibilites.